Counselling
When Everything is Crashing Around You
I think I’d have a mental breakdown if I was in Job’s position yet he blessed God at the end of chapter one after all he lost and went through. A lot of people cursed God and died for much less than what Job went through. We should examine ourselves and see how we’d go [...]
A Christian Self Image
I’ve been meaning to finish up my series on self image for a long time now. You can see the first two posts here and here. Those two posts lay the groundwork for this one. I’m going to try to summarise a Christian self image succinctly. 1) God made you and what he made was [...]
On Confrontation and Self-Love
I was reading through Paul Tripp’s Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands earlier and was struck by his thoughts on confrontation. Our failure to confront one another biblically must be seen for what it is: something rooted in our tendency to run after god-replacements. We confront unbiblically (or not at all) because we love something else [...]
Broken Minds
Last week I blogged about the significance of mental illness for Christian counsellors. Perhaps some of you were interested in more information about this topic. Let me recommend a book that may be a real help to you. Steve and Robyn Bloem wrote a book called Broken Minds that tells their story of battling with [...]
The Forgotten Downtrodden
The elephant in the room of contemporary Biblical counselling, in my view, is correctly responding to mental illness. While there has been a resurgence of Biblically based counselling over the last 30 years, many Christians, in my view, are still behind the eight ball in how they deal with the scourge of mental illness. While [...]
FIREPROOF
Last night I watched Fireproof with my wife. I was a reluctant viewer. The thought of watching another Christian movie made in America with a happy ending sounded completely uninspiring. However, my wife’s gracious persistence paid off. What a movie! It had humour, action, pathos, at times heart rending glimpses into the tensions within all [...]
When to tell…
One thing I’m learning is that everyone has something dark in their past… or present… that almost nobody knows about. Sometimes it’s hard to know whether you should tell someone else or not. Here are a few thoughts on when to tell. You should consider telling someone else… 1. When you haven’t told anyone. You [...]
The “Whys”
Have you been in a hard circumstance where you asked the Lord, “Why”? I doubt if there have been many of us who haven’t. When we go through those questioning times, it’s important for us to respond the right way. We can choose to become bitter and resentful towards God and our circumstances or we [...]
Are You Really In The Family?
God knew that His children would, from time to time, have doubts about their salvation. He anticipated our agonies of the soul and gave us a little book called 1 John that gives comfort to those who know His Son in truth. A preacher once said that only a Pharisee would never doubt his salvation. [...]
The Prayer of a Seventeen Year Old Quaker Girl
I stumbled across this prayer one morning during my devotional time. It caused me to think about the way I pray. I found myself asking questions like, “Do I see myself as God sees me?”, “Do I appreciate what God has done for me?”, and “Do I want to let God remove these proud tendencies [...]
Lessons from a Shopping Mall
I remember walking into a shopping mall for the very first time and was overtaken by the size of the mall and the variety of shops that lay before me. I remember feeling very lost and very alone. This feeling was alleviated somewhat when I saw the blessed directory. Like all good directories, this directory [...]
Insecurity, Part Four
The God and His Love By Jason Harris In part three, we saw that a mature experience of God’s love for us is the only real cure for insecurity. But knowing the love of God will not help unless we really know both the God Who loves us, and the kind of love that He [...]
